Christmas Carols History Trivia
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191 free Christmas Carols History trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Christmas carols history trivia quiz is about where the carols came from: the Austrian priest and schoolmaster behind Silent Night, the French wine merchant who wrote O Holy Night on a stagecoach, the Methodist hymn that borrowed a Mendelssohn tune written for a printing-press anniversary, the Welsh New Year's Eve song that became Deck the Halls, and the Ukrainian spring chant that turned into Carol of the Bells. It also covers the tradition itself: Francis of Assisi and the first vernacular carols, the Puritan years, wassailing, the Victorian collectors who saved the old songs, and the Cornish bishop who invented Nine Lessons and Carols to get people out of the pub. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has sung in a school concert, a third are medium, and the rest are for choristers, organists and people who own the Oxford Book of Carols. It works as a church social round, a family quiz between courses or a solo Advent challenge. Every answer was checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 191 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Silent Night was first performed on Christmas Eve 1818 in a village church near which Austrian city?
Salzburg
Oberndorf, where Silent Night was first sung at St Nicholas church in 1818, lies about 17 km north of Salzburg; the flood-damaged church was later replaced by the Silent Night Chapel.
Q 02In Good King Wenceslas, whom does the king trudge through the snow to help?
A poor peasant
The king spots a poor peasant gathering winter fuel and sets out with flesh, wine and pine logs; his page keeps going by treading in the king's footprints.
Q 03Who wrote the words to Silent Night, two years before it was set to music?
Joseph Mohr
Joseph Mohr, a young assistant priest, wrote the six-verse poem in 1816; a manuscript in his own hand, found in 1995, finally confirmed that date and named Gruber as the composer.
Q 04In 2011 Silent Night was declared an intangible cultural heritage by which organisation?
UNESCO
The Austrian Commission for UNESCO added Silent Night to its national inventory of intangible cultural heritage in March 2011, honouring the carol first sung at Oberndorf in 1818.
Q 05In We Wish You a Merry Christmas, what do the singers refuse to leave without?
Figgy pudding
Figgy pudding is the demand, 'we won't go until we get some': a cheeky echo of the old custom of rewarding house-to-house carollers with food and drink, in a song from England's West Country.
Q 06Placide Cappeau reportedly composed the poem behind O Holy Night in 1847 while travelling how?
Stagecoach
Legend says Placide Cappeau, a Roquemaure wine merchant, drafted Minuit, chrétiens in a stagecoach on the road to Paris after his parish priest asked him for a Christmas poem.
Q 07Which composer of the ballet Giselle set O Holy Night to music within days?
Adolphe Adam
Adolphe Adam wrote the music for Emily Laurey, a singer he knew who was then living in Roquemaure; he set the poem in a few days and she sang it at Midnight Mass there in 1847.
Q 08John Sullivan Dwight's English version of O Holy Night says that which person 'is our brother'?
The slave
The slave is 'our brother' in Dwight's third verse, 'Chains shall He break'; it follows Cappeau's French original, in which the Redeemer sees a brother where there was only a slave.
Q 09Wesley's original 1739 opening line for Hark the Herald Angels Sing mentioned the 'welkin', meaning what?
The sky
The sky, or the vault of heaven, is what 'welkin' means: Wesley wrote 'Hark how all the welkin rings', and George Whitefield changed it in 1753 to the herald angels sung today.
Q 10Mendelssohn wrote the tune now used for Hark the Herald Angels Sing to celebrate the 400th anniversary of what?
The printing press
The printing press, credited to Gutenberg, was the hero of Mendelssohn's secular 1840 cantata; in 1855 the English organist William Cummings fitted Wesley's words to one of its choruses.
Q 11God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen is name-checked in which Charles Dickens Christmas book?
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol has a young singer try it at Scrooge's keyhole, only to flee when Scrooge seizes a ruler; Dickens words the line 'God bless you, merry gentleman'.
Q 12The earliest known copies of which Christmas hymn are in the hand of the 18th-century music copyist John Francis Wade?
Adeste Fideles
Adeste Fideles, known in English as O Come, All Ye Faithful, comes down from Wade, an English Catholic living in exile abroad; a Durham scholar argues its words began as a coded birth ode to Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Q 13Which priest's 1841 translation became the English carol 'O Come All Ye Faithful'?
Q 21Edmund Sears, the Massachusetts pastor who wrote It Came Upon the Midnight Clear in 1849, belonged to which denomination?
Unitarian
Unitarian minister Edmund Sears wrote it in 1849 at Wayland; unusually for a carol, its plea for peace on a warring earth never mentions the birth of Jesus.
Q 22Angels We Have Heard on High is an English version of a traditional carol from which country?
France
France's Les Anges dans nos campagnes was freely paraphrased in 1862 by James Chadwick, a Catholic bishop in north-east England, who left the refrain 'Gloria in excelsis Deo' as it stood.
Q 23In the Bleak Midwinter began as a poem by which Victorian poet, published in Scribner's Monthly in 1872?
Christina Rossetti
Frederick Oakeley
Frederick Oakeley, then an Anglican at London's Margaret Chapel, made the translation in 1841 and became a Roman Catholic in 1845; his opening 'Ye faithful, approach ye' was revised to 'O come, all ye faithful' in 1852.
Q 14The real Wenceslas of Good King Wenceslas was a tenth-century duke of which land?
Bohemia
Bohemia's Duke Wenceslaus was murdered in a plot by his brother Boleslav and became the Czech patron saint; the title of king came only after his death, conferred by Emperor Otto I.
Q 15Good King Wenceslas is set to a 13th-century tune originally about which season?
Spring
The tune is Tempus adest floridum, 'the time of flowers is here', a 13th-century spring song that J. M. Neale paired with his new Wenceslas words in 1853.
Q 16The First Nowell is a traditional English carol most likely from which county?
Cornwall
It reached a wide audience through an 1833 antiquarian collection, Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern.
Q 17The melody of Deck the Halls comes from Nos Galan, a traditional carol from which country?
Wales
Wales supplied the tune, Nos Galan, a song for New Year's Eve rather than Christmas; Scottish musician Thomas Oliphant wrote the English words for it in 1862.
Q 18We Three Kings was written in 1857 by an Episcopal clergyman in which country?
America
America: John Henry Hopkins Jr. is said to have written it for a New York seminary's Christmas pageant, giving each of the three kings a solo verse about his gift.
Q 19Phillips Brooks wrote O Little Town of Bethlehem in 1868 for which group at his Philadelphia church?
The Sunday school
The Sunday school sang it first, a few years after Brooks spent Christmas in Bethlehem; organist Lewis Redner put off the tune until the night before, then woke with the melody in his head.
Q 20Which composer collected 'Forest Green', the British tune for O Little Town of Bethlehem?
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams took the tune from a folk ballad, The Ploughboy's Dream, and fitted it to the carol for the 1906 English Hymnal; US churches sing Lewis Redner's 'St. Louis' instead.
Christina Rossetti's poem appeared in Scribner's Monthly in January 1872; it became a carol only in 1906, twelve years after her death, when The English Hymnal set it to music.
Q 24Which English composer wrote the congregational tune 'Cranham' for In the Bleak Midwinter?
Gustav Holst
Gustav Holst wrote Cranham for the 1906 English Hymnal, bending the tune to fit the poem's irregular lines so a congregation could sing them; choirs often prefer Harold Darke's 1909 anthem.
Q 25The Coventry Carol, a lullaby sung by mothers, refers to which biblical event?
The Massacre of the Innocents
The Massacre of the Innocents is its subject: in a 16th-century Coventry nativity play, the mothers of Bethlehem sing the lullaby on stage to the babies Herod has doomed.
Q 26Cecil Frances Alexander's 1848 hymnbook, with Once in Royal David's City, was aimed at whom?
Little children
Alexander's Hymns for Little Children (1848) taught the Creed to the young, this hymn illustrating 'born of the Virgin Mary'; Henry Gauntlett's tune Irby followed in 1849.
Q 27At King's College Cambridge, who sings the first verse of Once in Royal David's City on Christmas Eve?
A solo boy chorister
A solo boy chorister sings the first verse unaccompanied; by tradition the director of music chooses him only seconds before the service begins, so no boy has time to get nervous.
Q 28Away in a Manger was long wrongly said to be a cradle song that which man wrote for his children?
Martin Luther
Martin Luther got the credit in 1880s America, where it was printed as 'Luther's Cradle Hymn', supposedly sung by German mothers; nothing like it exists in his writings, and the carol is American.
Q 29Joy to the World was written in 1719 by which English hymn-writer as a paraphrase of Psalm 98?
Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts published it in 1719 as a paraphrase of Psalm 98 headed 'The Messiah's Coming and Kingdom'; it was not written for Christmas, and gained its familiar tune only a century later.
Q 30Which folk-song collector took down the standard version of The Holly and the Ivy from a singer in Chipping Campden?
Cecil Sharp
Cecil Sharp noted the words and tune from Mary Clayton of Chipping Campden and printed them in his English Folk-Carols (1911), the book that fixed the version sung today.